Nothing wrong with surface dressing (that’s its proper name….) at all. They make a lot better job of it these days and it’s pretty much always an improvement IME.
You obviously don’t live in London, where this type of bodging is never done properly, and invariably needs repairing again (and again and again..) within a very short time. Mostly, the bodgers just fill a hle in and run a roller over it. Which then gets pounded by the volume of traffic, and breaks up again. Rearely do they do a whole section of road properly, and even when they do, they’ll frequently take weeks and weeks to do a relatively simple job, thus causing problems for all road users. Might as well just fix the road properly then. 🙄
The roadsin this country are generaly sht. Which, considering the revenue in VED and fuel taxes etc, makes you wonder where the money is being spent. Oh, on weapns to wage war in overseas lands with precious natural resources…